


Major Decision

by dreamiflame, Rosencrantz



Category: Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Genre: Advice, Decisions, Future Fic, Gen, Ohana, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-12 14:57:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7938883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/pseuds/dreamiflame, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/pseuds/Rosencrantz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lilo thought university was out of the question for a lot of reasons. But the universe owes her one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Major Decision

**Author's Note:**

  * For [failsafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



> You said 'film only' and that bringing in the rest of the characters was fine. I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Thank you to my beta and coauthor, Rosencrantz, for helping make this a lot better. I wrote the bones of the story, but he fleshed it out with much funnier jokes and cooler college descriptions.

When Pleakley’s communicator chirped the day before Lilo was due to start her senior year of high school, no one gave it a second thought. Pleakley’s mother stayed in close contact, calling her son regularly. Very regularly.

Pleakley flipped the communicator open. “Hello, mom.”

“Agent Pleakley, I am not your mother,” the Grand Councilwoman of the Galactic Federation said, tone frosty. Lilo swallowed a giggle, aware from past experience that the communicator had a much wider range of contacts than one might assume.

“Uh, apologies!” Pleakley squeaked, nearly dropping the communicator. The Grand Councilwoman could render him flustered with a single word. “What do you want? I mean, what do I do? What can I do? What do you need, Grand Councilwoman?”

“I wish to speak to Lilo Pelekai.”

Lilo put her juice glass down with a thump. This was unexpected. She and the Grand Councilwoman had spoken, of course, most memorably when Lilo had accused her of stealing Stitch, but for the most part, the Councilwoman spoke to Pleakley, or to Stitch himself. More occasionally, she spoke to Nani, to make sure Stitch was still behaving himself. A risky conversation.

Lilo took the communicator, made a quick, mostly futile swipe through her hair to look more awake, and lifted the device so she could see the Grand Councilwoman. “Hello?”

“Hello, Lilo. I trust I find you well?” In the communicator's small viewscreen, the Grand Councilwoman wore a polite, neutral expression.

Small talk? This was even worse. “I’m fine, thanks,” Lilo said, trying not to frown. She forced herself to smile her very best ‘my alien best friend is behaving himself no need to worry or send anyone to reclaim him!’ expression. At her side, Stitch touched her elbow, offering support.

“It has come to my attention that you are nearly finished with your planet’s primary education. Forgive me, I meant your country. Am I correct?” The Grand Councilwoman’s tone was polite and interested. Lilo’s confusion grew, but she nodded.

“Um,” said Lilo. “Well, kind of. This will be my last year of high school.”

The Grand Councilwoman frowned to herself as she went over the term. “High… school..” she said. “Yes. Am I also correct in assuming you are not planning to pursue higher education past that?”

Lilo winced. “Ah. You talked to Cobra?” That gossip.

“Agent Bubbles and I confer frequently about matters concerning Stitch,” the Grand Councilwoman said. Whether or not these conversations were more flattering than the check ups with Nani, the Grand Councilwoman did not say.

Sighing, Lilo prepared herself for yet another lecture on not wasting her potential. Nani had a whole bookcase filled with them. “Of course I’d love to go to college! But you need good grades and I’m fighting the system, Grand Councilwoman. Every step. Plus it’s more important for the girls to go to college and it’s me or them. I have to be a good auntie.”

Nani and David had married when Lilo was nine, and they had two daughters, Kalea, six, and Mililani, who was four. Lilo loved her nieces, even if they were more than paying her back for all the trouble she’d given Nani as a child. Sometimes she thought Nani was giving them tips.

“Never mind the cost. You do wish to have more schooling?” The Grand Councilwoman asked. Weird question, thought Lilo. Why does she care?

Stitch spoke up from Lilo’s side. “Lilo is very smart.”

“ _Thank_ you, 626,” the Grand Councilwoman said. “I was asking Miss Pelekai.”

“If it really didn’t cost anything, then yes,” Lilo said. She figured that was a safe, neutral answer. She wanted to go ‘yes, yes!’ but that wasn’t how you spoke to a grand councilwoman or in front of your sister who felt guilty you were insisting on staying back for her daughters.

The Councilwoman gave her a rare, thin lipped smile. “Excellent. I shall have some brochures sent to you. As guardian of the ana- Stitch,” she corrected herself, “you have served the Galactic Federation well. The least the Federation can do for you is help with your education.”

Nani dropped a plate. It bounced. After ‘Life With Stitch’ had become a thing, all dishes in their home were plastic now. She had been doing the dishwashing and making faces at David across the kitchen while Lilo had talked, but now she swept over to Lilo’s side and snatched the communicator from Lilo’s unresisting fingers. “Are you trying to tell me you’re going to send my _baby sister_ to college in **SPACE**?”

“Is that a problem, Mrs. Kawena?”

“I’m not a baby,” Lilo grumbled at her sister, trying to reach for the communicator, only for Nani to dance out of reach. “And you were just hoping for a miracle to send me to college yesterday. This is a miracle! A space miracle!”

Nani shot Lilo a glare. “To college on _Earth_. How am I supposed to help you if you’re off somewhere in space? Anything could happen in space!”

“How were you going to help me if I was on the Big Island? Or the mainland?” Lilo pointed out. “Anything can happen on the mainland too. Probably.”

Stitch reached as high as he could on Nani’s leg and patted it. “Nani, don’t worry. I go with Lilo.”

The Grand Councilwoman heaved a huge sigh, drawing their attention back to the communicator. “Oh, very well,” she said. “I suppose if we educate you, it will help civilize you more. And Miss Pelekai will be there to keep you in check. Fine, Stitch may join you in your studies.”

“Yippee!” said Stitch.

“However,” the Grand Councilwoman thundered, and Stitch shrank back into a listening posture, “if I hear a single complaint about you returning to form, Stitch, I shall have you sent back to Earth, without Lilo, to serve out your exile. Do I make myself clear?”

He nodded, and the Grand Councilwoman turned her attention back to Nani. Nani quickly swiveled her wrist to turn the communicator back to her. “I trust you are also satisfied with this?”

Nani looked like she’d bitten a lemon, but nodded shortly before she handed the communicator back to Lilo. “And you, Lilo? Are you pleased with this solution? We really feel that you are owed for your service to us.”

“I really, truly, actually get to go to space college?” Lilo asked.

She got another thin lipped smile. “Indeed you do.”

“Yes,” Lilo said, trying not to bounce and squeal. “Please, send the brochures and applications or communication crystals or whatever! Whatever space college needs, send it!”

“Of course,” agreed the Councilwoman. “We will have to waive a few of the requirements, due to your planet’s somewhat… unenlightened nature. But I’m sure you’ll find an ideal college or higher place of education of a similar nature. I will be including my own alma mater. You remind me of myself in a way, Lilo. If I had been more undisciplined and prone to befriending strange creatures, that is. It may be a good fit.”

She signed off, and Lilo sat there in stunned silence until her nieces rushed in from outside and started to climb on her. “I thought you were taking us surfing!” Kalea shouted.

“Right, right,” she said, and put it out of her mind for now, It was the last day of summer vacation, and she _had_ promised the girls.

*

Former Captain Gantu brought the ‘space college whatevers’ to the house around a week later. Lilo came home from school and found Gantu and Stitch in a faceoff, the giant, shark-headed Shaelik glaring down at Stitch.

“You cannot attend the Military Academy, 626,” Gantu boomed. “The Grand Councilwoman would never allow _you_ in the military.” He spotted Lilo and frowned more. “Or you, though you’ve finally grown a little.”

Lilo beamed at him as sunnily as she could. “So nice to see you again, Gantu,” she said. Gantu looked unnerved.

He thrust a thick package at her, as if warding her off. Lilo smiled even more sunnily, hoping this was an act of dominance on Gantu’s planet. “The Grand Councilwoman tells me you’ll be filling out applications. My comm number is on the inside. _Don’t_ use it for anything but a request to pick up your forms.”

Stitch looked like Christmas had come early, and Gantu scowled even more at him. “You’re still an abomination.”

“Still a stupid head,” Stitch replied. Gantu grunted and stalked off, wasting no time getting away from them and Earth. A few minutes later, they heard the whine of his engines starting, and a boom of displaced air as he ascended into the sky.

Lilo put him out of her mind and hurried into the house. She dropped kisses on her nieces’ foreheads, took the plate of peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwich and sliced mango Pleakley offered her, and hurried to her room. Stitch followed on her heels, and climbed up to sit on her desk while she sat down and opened the folder.

Space college brochures had moving pictures, like gifs from the internet, and embedded videos (blurbs about the campus, bios of the faculty, and undergraduate testimonials), and interactive text. They were beautiful and totally unreadable. Lilo didn’t have the slightest idea how to read Federation script.

So she flipped through the brochures, clicked through the tablets, and gazed at the applications which were, mercifully, in English. Space college didn’t look like how she’d imagined. Some took place without walls or floors, another seemed to travel around the galaxy on a ship. Yet another, and she thought this might be the Grand Councilwoman’s space college, was on a beautifully curated planet that seemed devoted solely to the school. Statues and plants she couldn’t begin to comprehend filled the moving pictures. She put that one underneath the floating in space one, at the prized number two choice spot.

A week ago she’d had no chance of college. Now she had a choice of ten.

There was a knock on her door, and Pleakley poked his head in. “So, I was thinking about your situation, and I thought you might need some advice. You should go to the Galactic Alliance Community College. That was my alma mater!” He echoed the Grand Councilwoman with a beaming smile.

Lilo flipped through the brochures again. “Sorry, Pleakley, I’m pretty sure the Grand Councilwoman didn’t send me that one.”

“Oh.” He drooped, noticeably, and Lilo felt a twinge of guilt. “Well, at least tell me you’ll consider agent training. You’re already an expert on Earth, I’m sure the agency would be happy to consider you!”

“I’ll think about it,” Lilo promised, mostly to see him smile again, and turned back to her desk as he wandered off.

Stitch made a scoffing noise. “We don’t want to be agents,” he said. She didn't point out they wouldn't take him and that's how she liked him.

“What _do_ you want to study?” Lilo asked him.

“Architecture,” Stitch said. “Music. Maybe weapons design.” Of course, she thought at the last one.

Lilo smiled and stroked his ears, like he really was her dog. 

“I think you’re going to need to narrow it down a little,” she said.

Stitch rubbed his head on her hand. “What about you?” He made a happy noise as she got just the right spot. Lilo wondered what Stitch would look like in a classroom. She wondered what she’d look like in one of these classrooms. Would one of the other students mistake her for a snack?

But more important: What did she want to study? Lilo had gotten so used to the idea of not going to college, she wasn’t sure what she would do there. And that was just Earth colleges! She looked again through the colleges. 

“I’m not sure,” she confessed. None of them were comprehensible enough for her to see what programs they offered.

“Think,” he advised her. There was a screaming laugh (Mililani, Lilo identified), and Stitch hopped down from her desk. “I go sit on the babies,” he said, and went off.

The laughter only got louder from there. Lilo put the problem aside and pulled out her Earth homework, and some headphones. To the soothing tones of Elvis, she focused on her math.

*

After dinner, Jumba knocked on the door of the house. “Jumba!” yelled the girls, and ran to jump on him. Jumba tossed them each up in the air twice, then set them down carefully at Nani’s stern look. 

“I talk to bigger little girl?” he asked.

A short while later, Lilo joined him on the porch. “Pleakley tells me you go to university in space. Congratulations! Now, I have made you the best of the gifts.” He held up a necklace in the shape of a surfboard. “Translator, for the languages.”

She took it, feeling oddly teary. Lilo knew how fortunate she was, to have grown up the child of two worlds: the normal Hawaiian island life, and then her outer space friends and family. And Jumba had always given the best gifts. There was one time… well, that story and what happened to the microwave was for another time.

“Does it work with writing?” she asked, putting it around her neck. The clasp clicked shut in the back like a magnet.

“What good would it be if not?” Jumba asked, and patted her arm. “You should study evil science. I mean, good science.” He gave her a huge grin and winked his two left eyes. “I would never advise evil, of course.”

“Of course not,” she said, and leaned down to peck his forehead. “Thank you, Uncle Jumba. It’s beautiful.”

He waved and went down the stairs, heading back to the little house he shared with Pleakley. Lilo touched her necklace, then tucked it below her shirt and went to help wrangle her nieces for bedtime.

*

Jumba’s gift worked perfectly, and Lilo read all of the brochures cover to cover. The pictures didn’t do the possibilities justice. She started filling out the applications, and prodded Stitch to do the same. 

“Boring!” Stitch proclaimed, and chewed on his pencil.

“You’re going to have to do a lot more than that if you really want to come with me,” she pointed out. Stitch sighed, spat out the eraser (into the trashcan, she’d finally gotten him trained properly), and went back to writing.

Lilo kept getting stuck at the same point on each form: desired major. She filled out the rest of it and kept thinking.

*

”It’s too bad they can’t offer a surfing degree,” David said one morning. Lilo gave him a smile for the weak joke. “Or hula dancing. You’d be great at it.”

“I checked, none of the colleges offer either of those,” Lilo said, “but thanks, David.”

Nani offered her toast, still just about the only thing she could cook well. “I don’t care what you study, as long as you like it.”

Lilo bit into her toast. “Thanks, but I still haven’t figured out what that is. Did you know I could craft nebulas?”

Kalea bounced in her chair. “Study to be a princess!”

“No, a queen!” chimed in Mililani.

“A unicorn!” Kalea would not be outdone.

Mililani made a face at her sister. “A dragon!”

Lilo laughed, then decided what to explain to them. “Universities teach you how to do something useful, and I already know how to eat someone all up like a dragon. Okay, they teach you mostly useful things. And then you get a degree. There’s no degree in ‘princess’ or ‘unicorn’...”

“Awwww.” The identical looks of disappointment made Lilo grin.

Stitch brought over omelets and passed them out. “Lilo will find something good.”

*

Lilo stared at the blank sheet on the form. What did she want to study? It had to be something worth an opportunity like this.

Stitch nudged his way into her lap. “Lilo can’t decide?”

“No,” she said, and hugged her best friend. “Did you decide?”

“Architecture,” Stitch said again. “And music. Double major.” They'd started using the Earth terms for it, since it seemed each planet’s school used a completely different set of definitions.

“Hm,” Lilo said. “Why architecture?”

Stitch hugged her arms. “Build better, then things don’t break so easily.”

It made a certain amount of Stitch sense, so Lilo just nodded. “Maybe I should study music,” she said. “I like music.”

“Hula,” Stitch says. “Elvis. Not _all_ music.”

She hadn’t even thought of that. “Is alien music different?”

Stitch nodded. Well, there went that idea.

Maybe she didn’t have to make a decision of a traditional major or strike out into the completely alien ones that were defined in the brochures, Lilo thought, getting excited. Maybe she could make up her own major. “What if I wanted to study human/alien interactions?” she said. “First meetings, living together, conflict and cooperation and education?”

Stitch nodded fiercely. “Is good. You’ll do great.”

“Thanks,” Lilo said and picked up her pen. She printed the same thing on each application and signed her name. “There. Now we just need to call Gantu.”

Letting out a huge cackle, Stitch snatched the number Lilo had been guarding from him and raced from the room. “Stitch!” she called, and sighed as he laughed again.

After her ‘ohana, space college was going to be a piece of cake.

**Author's Note:**

> Kalea means filled with joy, Mililani means love from Heaven.


End file.
